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Priest: Act now to save Georgia's turtles

My family gathered in wonder years ago as a turtle laid a tumult of eggs right in front of them in our backyard. When nature called, the new mother happened to have an audience.

Hatchlings now face much more ominous threats. A burgeoning market for turtles in Asia means that they’re being vacuumed up across the state to such an extent that wildlife managers at the Department of Natural Resources are worried enough to consider some restrictions for the first time.

Limits that would apply to each permit holder have been proposed for each species of freshwater turtle that isn’t — yet — endangered. Three species would be limited to 100, others are at 300, and one, called the pond slider, is set at 1,000.

If you add up the column of catch limits for each species, you see that someone could conceivably trap 3,100 turtles each year. And if that person is expanding a turtle-farm pond or restocking one, they can double that amount for two years. That’s more than 12,000 turtles in a two-year period. And it’s potentially far more than that, because DNR can allow exemptions for trappers culling wild stock from other folks’ private ponds.

I talked to Grover Brown, a University of Georgia student who studies turtles, who said the world is turning its attention to our turtles in the Southeast because they’ve been eaten to extinction in their own countries.

What makes the problem more alarming than allowing exportation of most any other Georgia critter is that turtles reproduce so very slowly. Some species take 20 years to mature to egg-bearing age. If we allow thousands upon thousands of turtles to be trapped and exported, we’ll soon have very few of breeding age in the wild.

South Carolina does not allow turtle exports. Florida sets a number to be harvested and divides that total among the folks who want to trap them.

In Georgia, we don’t even know how many of which species are out there, and the proposed restrictions have no monitoring component. We should not allow a broad taking without keeping track of the viability and vulnerability of turtle populations.

Brown explained that turtles, like most other wildlife, are already under extreme pressure from fragmented habitats, road-building, draining wetlands — right here on Epps Bridge Parkway, for example — and global climate change. Eggs often rot when temperatures are high.

What can we do to help these easy-to-trap creatures? A public comment period about limiting turtle capture and export in Georgia ends today. Please write to ask for stricter limits and for monitoring of wild turtle populations. The email address for the chief of the nongame conservation section is Mike.Harris@dnr.state.ga.us.

I asked Brown if he knew how turtles are killed for meat abroad. He paused before saying simply, “It’s heart-wrenching.” He offered to send photos rather than describe what he knew, but I decided I didn’t have the stomach for it. I’ll leave that to readers’ imaginations, alongside a vision of ponds and fields across Georgia stripped of spiny soft-shell turtles, painted turtles, river cooters and more.

I hope readers won’t withdraw into their shell and ignore the plight of these lumbering creatures, thinking that other people will speak up for turtles.

• Patricia J. Priest is executive producer of “True South” on local radio station WGAU-AM (1340). Her commentaries appear occasionally in the Athens Banner-Herald.